


zen and the art of being a doormat

by Largishcat



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Alien Culture, Cohabitation, Domesticity But Weird, First Time, Internalized Shortphobia, Irken Class Politics, Literal Curtain Shopping, M/M, Pining, The Importance of Asking Before You Kiss Someone, hints of D/s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-18 16:25:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21930349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Largishcat/pseuds/Largishcat
Summary: Zim is an asshole, but Skoodge, for a variety of personal and philosophical reasons, is into it.
Relationships: Invader Skoodge/Zim
Comments: 11
Kudos: 139





	zen and the art of being a doormat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HOOAH](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HOOAH/gifts).



> This is for hmpgh for Secret Santa! I hope you enjoy. I tried to make this fluffy, but then I started thinking about Irken class politics and things went downhill from there.

Skoodge stood by the smoldering wreck of his Megadoomer Mark I and felt vaguely disappointed as his career and his planet both went up in smoke.

It was all kind of beautiful, in a horrible way, all the flames and explosions. Irken soldiers were programmed to find destruction beautiful. Apparently, it didn’t matter if it was your own army getting destroyed.

A handful of invaders sprinted past. Far away, in the direction they were running from, Skoodge could see a mech tank lurching through the rubble. Firing rockets off at random. 

Somehow, over the screams and explosions, Skoodge could still hear the sound of distant laughter. He had to mentally suppress the ping his PAK sent him, identifying that laugh as friendly and familiar. He’d been happy enough to make that mistake before, but he didn’t think he’d survive it today. It looked like Zim might slow down soon, anyway. He’d be out of missiles soon.

Skoodge sighed, then pulled on his gas mask and went to look for survivors.

||

Fifty years later, Skoodge was living in semi-exile on a planet so far away from the galactic center that the skies were actually dark at night. So black they seemed almost empty. Nothing like the skies of Irk, where even the bright lights of the capital couldn’t drown out the glare of a trillion stars.

Life on Earth was weird. Not only because life on Earth was life with Zim and Zim was possibly the strangest person alive. Life with anyone would have been weird after years of solo missions, no company but a SIR unit and masses of interchangeable aliens.

The natural state of an Irken was in the midst of a swarm, but invaders were selected specifically for their ability to handle isolation.

A long time ago, back in training, the recruits had all been locked in a metal cube, all alone, to see how long they could last. Skoodge made it three weeks, two days, and fourteen hours before he had to tap out. The second highest score.

The highest had been Zim’s. They’d had to go in and extract him after five weeks without a peep, expecting to find a corpse. Instead, they’d found Zim staring at the ceiling. 

He told them he’d lost track of time.

||

Skoodge’s first planet was a disaster. Or, rather, it was an incredible success, and the fact that it was a success was a disaster.

He’d been sort of grandfathered into Impending Doom II, as one of fourteen invaders to survive the implosion of Doom I.

His mistake, Skoodge reflected as he was marched to the airlock, was not letting Zim kill him when he had the chance. 

“Skoodge, is that you?” Skoodge blinked away the blurriness in his vision to see his old unit commander, from years and years ago when he’d still been a ground troop grunt. She had a drink in one hand and three donuts hooked over the claws of her other hand. She must have come from the party. The one where everyone was celebrating the first successful invasion of Impending Doom II while the first successful _invader_ was busy being executed.

Skoodge tried to surreptitiously wipe his face, which was hard when she was staring right at him. He smiled at her. “Hi, Commander Blee.”

She’d once sent Skoodge into an insurgent base on Gleep with no backup. The only thing she’d said when he’d stumbled back into camp hours later, covered antennae to boot tips in caustic blue blood was, “Oh, you’re not dead? Neat.”

“Hey, short-stuff,” said Commander Blee. Skoodge didn’t blink. He’d been called worse. “It’s General now, actually. I’m coordinating the G-sector invasion force.”

Skoodge perked his antennae up, smiling more widely. “Congrats. You finally got that desk job you always wanted.” It had been inevitable. Blee was elite-tall and whip thin, with large eyes and antennae that curled delicately at the ends. No one who looked like that was on the front lines for long.

“Ha, right? What are you up to these days?”

“Being executed.”

“Huh. Why?”

“I conquered my planet before anyone else.”

“Oh, yeah,” she laughed and sucked on her drink. “That was dumb of you. Maybe you really are defective, not just short. You should have known better.”

The thing was, Skoodge _should_ have known better. He’d given into the temptation to show off. He’d been proud that Blorch burned while half the invaders were still flailing around trying to figure out which local snacks were okay to eat. For some reason, he’d thought he’d proven himself enough for that to be okay.

The corners of his eyes prickled again and for a single, sharp-edged moment, Skoodge wished he really was defective, because then there’d be nothing to stop him from grabbing a gun from on of the bored soldiers marching him to his death and shooting Blee right between her smug fucking eyes. 

Inside his head, he heard the sound her armor would make hitting the floor. He imagined she’d crumple like a paper napkin. That was how aliens looked, when they died.

But Skoodge wasn’t defective, so he just nodded sadly.

“You were always too cocky for someone the size of a table drone. A lot of people are going to be glad it finally bit you in the ass. Myself included.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“Good,” Blee nodded, “I’m glad we understand each other.” She snapped her claws at one of the soldiers. “Get Invader Skoodge a ship and a new SIR unit before you toss him into space. Invader, your new assignment is the planet Fump. It’s on the edge of Meekrob territory. The invader previously assigned to it was killed by the native flaming squid people. Further information will be uploaded to your shipboard computer.”

Skoodge saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”

General Blee did not salute back.

||

Skoodge conquered his second planet in four months, while half the other invaders were _still_ struggling with their first. 

He watched from orbit as Fump smoldered and wondered if all the other good invaders had been killed in the massacre that had ended Impending Doom I before it began. That got him thinking about Zim, for the first time in a long time. The last Skoodge had heard, Zim had been re-banished to a planet no one had heard of on the outer edged of the galaxy. They said if you looked west with a powerful enough telescope, you could see the light from the explosion.

But that was just the rumor mill churning—light from that part of the galaxy would take a billion years to reach the Armada, even if Zim really had blown up a star.

Zim was always hot gossip. The fact that Skoodge had come up in the same cohort as Zim was the one thing guaranteed to get other irkens to talk to him. There weren’t many of their cohort left. Most of them had died when the smeetery had exploded.

The last time Skoodge had seen Zim had been at the second Great Assigning. He hadn’t had a chance to speak to him then.

Watching the fires on Fump die out, Skoodge regretted that. He regretted never having the chance to ask Zim what killing another irken was like. 

Skoodge pinged the Armada and made sure to be somewhere else by the time they arrived.

Even short irkens could learn.

||

Skoodge tore through two more planets before the Tallest got annoyed enough with him to offer him a promotion.

He arrived on Hobo 13 prepared to be vaguely bored for a few days. Most instructors on the planet weren’t irken, so wouldn’t care when Skoodge breezed through the tests.

Instead, Skoodge ran into Zim, put his foot in his mouth, and almost died.

It had been so long since Skoodge had seen Zim in person. He hadn’t exactly forgotten what Zim was like, but he’d forgotten _how much_ Zim was like that. It was alarming. It was weirdly magnetic. Whatever else Zim was, he was never boring.

Watching Zim give a pep talk to their squad which was really just a treatise on how great he, Zim, was, Skoodge found himself feeling self-conscious. More aware of the fact that his uniform was stained and his boots were dusty.

Zim looked like something out of a propaganda poster, just like he always did. Perfect in every way, except the height.

He sneered at his troops and Skoodge felt like a smeet again. Zim was never impressed with anyone, and that had always made Skoodge want Zim to be impressed with him.

It was a deeply stupid impulse. But something about Zim’s smug smile and huge, red eyes made it easy to forget that he was _honestly_ defective. Actually out of his skull insane.

Thus, Skoodge almost died. He wasn’t mad about it. No one in the entire universe seemed to be able to contain Zim’s chaos, and there was no reason to think he would be exempt from being a casualty of it just because they’d been friends, sort of, once. 

Supernovas just exploded. They didn’t stop to think about who their radiation would hit.

||

The longer Skoodge spent on Earth, the more confused he became about what _Zim_ was doing on Earth.

Zim was an exile who insisted he was an Invader, but he didn’t act like either one. He reported back to the Armada regularly—and apparently gave all his reports directly to the _Tallest_ as if they had nothing better to do—so, he wasn’t very good at being an exile. At the same time, he put so little effort into actually _invading_ that Skoodge wondered if he wasn’t aware that his mission was fake after all.

He worked constantly, but everything he worked on was either stupidly useless or so unbelievably dangerous that it was just as likely to kill Zim and Skoodge as it was to shock and awe the native species.

And some schemes were just... odd. Like filing the town center with lime jello.

In Zim’s defense, it was explosive jello. Against his defense, it had blown them up more than anything else. And also drawn the attention the Earthen military, which apparently had primitive ships of their own. Which weren’t space worthy, but could fly very fast and shoot pretty well.

“We can’t go back to the base with them tailing us!” Skoodge shouted over the whistle of wind through the voot’s cracked hull and the high-pitched screaming of Zim’s broken SIR unit.

“I know that! Shut up!” Zim yelled back. He jerked the controls sideways and spun them into a tight barrel roll. A rocket flew past, through the air where the voot had been moments before.

One of the Earth ships tried to follow, but they weren’t as maneuverable as Irken tech, and it spun out of control, crashing into the side of a mountain. They nearly crashed themselves, but by some miracle of luck or skill or _something_ they straightened out last minute.

Skoodge’s spooch was pumping so fast it was almost vibrating. His PAK kept trying to trigger hormones to calm him down, but the signal was getting lost somewhere.

“Take the controls,” Zim said and was already out of the pilot’s seat and strapping on a jet pack before Skoodge could do more than blink. He grabbed his SIR unit by the head, slapped open the voot’s shield and was through and away without even the slightest explanation of what he wanted Skoodge to _do_ now that he had the controls.

Sighing, Skoodge glanced down at the control panel. He was leaking fuel and had three ships on his tail. Abruptly, one of them served jaggedly, and then he had two.

Skoodge pushed the controls down at the same time as he took his foot off the pedal. He hung suspended in the air for a long moment before gravity pulled the nose of the voot cruiser down.

He watched placidly as the ground rushed up at him, keeping one eye on the enemy ship that had decided to call his bluff, mentally running some calculations. This planet’s gravity was 9.807 m/s², which meant in order to avoid becoming a pink and green splatter he would need to pull up— _now_.

The Earth ship crashed into the ground and exploded very nicely. A few minutes later, Zim turned back up and planted his foot in Skoodge’s ribs to shove him out of the pilots seat.

Half an hour later they staggered back into Zim’s base, soot-smudged and still sticky from the jello.

Zim was cheerfully recounting his brilliant and successful plan to save their asses at the top of his lungs. It was completely incoherent, and involved a lot of daring do on Zim’s part that definitely _hadn’t_ happened. Zim, Skoodge suspected, hadn’t had a plan at all. Zim, Skoodge suspected, very rarely had a plan.

“You’re fantastic,” Skoodge said.

“Zim knows _that_ ,” Zim said dismissively.

“No, really, I mean it,” Skoodge said. “There’s no other Irken like you, Zim. Not one.” 

The rest would have been culled before exiting smeethood. Like Zim _should_ have been. Yet, here was Zim. _Living_ proof of why defectives could not be tolerated. 

Dangerous, deviant, endlessly destructive Zim. A natural disaster more than a person. A black hole barely contained behind clear, green skin and delicate bones. Impossibly small. Impossibly _dense_. Destroying anything that got too close to his gravitational well.

Zim preened, monologued, his little hands cutting through the air—and he looked so alive and magnetic and absolutely batshit crazy in that moment that Skoodge lost his mind a little.

Skoodge reached out and wrapped his fingers around the delicate base of Zim’s antenna and watched as Zim’s entire body froze.

“You know, you’d be really hot if you were a little taller,” Skoodge said. He dodged the PAK leg that would have skewered him straight through the middle. The ensuing scuffle ended when Skoodge let Zim sweep his legs out from under him, landing placatingly on his ass on the floor. Zim stood over him, rage rolling off him like steam off a hot engine.

“You wouldn’t be,” Zim hissed. He turned on his heel and left the room, heels clicking a perfect parade march.

Skoodge was surprised to feel a little hurt.

||

Before Impending Doom I, when Skoodge was still a soldier and not yet an invader, he killed his first alien. He had been on patrol with his unit. The planet was under Irken control, but there were still pockets of resistance—those would be gone soon.

He had been fresh out of the academy, ten units shorter than the rest of his squad, with scores too high for them to do anything but let him tag along.

They were crunching through the brush—not all the planet had been razed and covered in concrete yet. On the far side of the planet, mining operations were already underway. Skoodge could feel the slight tremors underneath his boots. 

There had been the tiniest flicker of movement off to the side and Skoodge had his gun up and firing before the others even twitched.

The alien had crumpled like a paper napkin. 

In the movies, that would have been the moment when the unit finally accepted the starry-eyed newbie with the crooked antenna or the mismatched eyes, and there would be a heartwarming message about how minor cosmetic defects did not prevent you from being useful to the Empire. But Skoodge didn’t have a crooked antenna or eyes that were different colors. He was just twenty-three units below standard, and completely lacking in any other physical characteristics that would have, if not made up for it, at least made him less unpleasant to look at.

He was useful, though. No one, in Skoodge’s entire life, had ever denied that he was useful.

||

“I like the yellow ones,” Skoodge said and stood his ground as Zim whipped around to glare at him.

They were inside a big, boxy building, about the size and shape of a Vortian fly tank. It was filled ceiling to floor with precarious stacks of furniture. From context clues, Skoodge determined that this was were the gangly, pink and brown animals that were the dominant species on this planet went to buy tables and stuff. 

It was no Furnituria, but few things compared with the glory of the Irken Mall System.

They were here, at this pale imitation of a store, because Zim had overheard one of the pink creatures say something to the effect of only a space alien would more than two years without remodeling and Zim had realized he’d had the same couch for three rotations and panicked.

Skoodge resisted to scratch at his antennae under Zim’s glare. These wigs were so itchy.

“I,” Zim said with the offended grace of a peezesmlart woken from a nap, “did not ask for your opinion.”

“You sure did not,” Skoodge said cheerfully. He smiled pleasantly at Zim, watching as Zim’s internal processes warred with each other. The impulse to disagree for the sake of disagreeing coming up against the fact that Zim knew as much as Skoodge did that those curtains would look nice with the new carpet.

It looked like Zim’s processors were stalling out, so Skoodge decided to hurry it along. 

“No, actually, I think they would look stupid,” he said. “We should get the blue ones.”

 _“Ha!”_ That had done it. “You’d just love to make a mockery of Zim’s living room, wouldn’t you, _Skoodge_. But I have seen through your feeble, foolish trickery. We will get the yellow ones. But the butter yellow, not the daisy!” Zim waved a hand at him, like he was commanding an errand drone. “Fetch them.”

Skoodge fetched.

He was aware of the fact that Zim wasn’t very nice to him, and never had been. No one was very nice to him if they could help it. It came from being twenty-three units below standard. From having a crick in one antenna, from having eyes that were too small and a neck that was too thick, from being too fucking smug for someone the size of a Vort rat, from having weird toes. 

Skoodge could list off his flaws from memory. People were always nice enough to point them out.

Universal disrespect got boring after a while. But _Zim_ being mean to him was interesting, because Zim was interesting. Skoodge had always thought so, ever since the first day of elite training when he’d watched Zim—twenty-three and a half units below standard, eyes as big as moons, and antennae as straight and black as flag poles—ordering around trainees twice his height like table drones.

There was something thrilling about having the same scorn turned on him. 

It was the strangest thing, seeing Zim’s sneer and wanting simultaneously to punch Zim in the face and stroke his claws over his cheek.

All that while knowing, deep in the core of his programming, that the most useful thing Skoodge could _ever_ do for the Empire was shoot Zim in the back of the head.

Skoodge wasn’t defective. He was intelligent, competent, he followed orders, respected authority, and knew his place. He was a good soldier.

Zim wasn’t any of that. All Zim was was free.

Right now, he was exercising his freedom by getting into a vicious argument with one of the gangly, juvenile humans who ran this store. From what Skoodge could make out, Zim had been mistaken for a larval human, and larval humans weren’t allowed to wander around on their own.

Skoodge stepped forward, before the shouting attracted too much attention.

“What seems to be the problem here?” He said with all the authority he could muster. It was actually a decent amount of authority. Skoodge had commanded squads before. The juvenile human straightened its back and turned a complete 360 before it finally looked down.

“Oh, great,” it said, “another unaccompanied child.” It squinted its small, strange eyes at him. “You’re really ugly, you know that?”

“Yes,” said Skoodge and shot it. Discreetly, with a tranquilizer.

He grabbed Zim around the arm, and hustled him back toward their cart as the human collapsed to the floor like a sack of gump-meal.

“I was handling that perfectly fine!” Zim said, indignant. “Your interference was not required!”

Skoodge was struck, again and again, with how shockingly, fundamentally, and to a degree that seemed impossible without deliberate forethought, bad at his job. Quite possibly the least competent invader alive. Because all the other ones had _died_.

He was deeply fortunate that the dominant species of his chosen planet seemed to have the intelligence and observational skills of space debris.

Skoodge wondered if Zim knew that, or if he just didn’t care.

“Hey, Zim?” he asked, steering them away from where the crumbled alien was drawing a crowd. “Why did you quit your job to become an invader?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Zim said. He did not elaborate. “And don’t change the subject! I was yelling at you.”

“Do you want to get a floor lamp?” Skoodge said, changing the subject.

“No, Zim does not want to get a _floor lamp_. Zim wants you to stop interfering in his mission!” Zim stomped off. A perfect parade march, all the way to the doors, leaving Skoodge with their precarious pile of interior decor.

He took the voot. Skoodge had to take everything back to the base on the bus.

||

After Hobo 13, Skoodge was denied a promotion. Then denied a fifth commission when he asked about that. Then denied a command spot on the front lines when he asked about _that_.

He ended up on the Conveyor Belt Planet, supervising the night shift on the western hemisphere.

Skoodge borrowed one of the company spittle runners to get milk for the breakroom and never went back.

Last time he’d been in Meekrob controlled space, Skoodge had intercepted a couple of encrypted Meekrob receivers while in Federation space. He had sent most of them on to the Armada, but had kept one for himself. There was chatter about isolated Irken activity in a distant solar system that didn’t seem to be in the path of the Armada. Skoodge figured that was a good place to look.

A few months later, Skoodge was knocking on Zim’s door. 

“Hey, you know the Meekrob Federation knows you’re here?”

“The who?” Zim squinted at him suspiciously, one eye visible through the gap in the door. He opened it a little wider when he recognized Skoodge. “Didn’t you get eaten by a pain beast on Hobo 13?”

“Sure did,” said Skoodge. “Can I come in?”

||

Skoodge left the big furniture on the front yard, and carried in the rug and the floor lamp he had picked out. It was a nice one. Soft bronze, with a creamy-colored shade shaped like some kind of spiky earth plant.

Zim was sitting on the couch, seething. He got to his feet when Skoodge came in. “I said I didn’t want a floor lamp.”

“I thought it would look nice,” said Skoodge.

“You’re _lying!”_ Zim snarled, spitting venom and paranoia. “You are trying to sabotage Zim! Like _Tak_. I see your _games_.”

“Who is—”

“Why are you even here?” Zim said, eyes narrow, antennae angled back aggressively. “It doesn’t make sense for the Tallest to send another invader to assist an invader. I need a grunt, not _you_.” Skoodge didn’t mention that it didn’t make sense for the Tallest to take a personal interest at all. “Weren’t you getting promoted or something? Shouldn’t you be conquering your _own_ planet?”

“Oh, I finished with my planets a while back.”

“Wait, pla _nets?_ ”

“Yeah, just four.” Skoodge held up four claws. “I was supposed to be assigned a fifth one after Hobo 13, but that never happened, so I came here instead.”

Zim stared at him for a long time, unblinking. “Skoodge,” he said, “who told you to come here?”

Skoodge thought about this for a moment. “No one, I suppose,” he said. “But invaders are free to adjust their own mission parameters to best benefit the Empire, and this is definitely where I’m supposed to be.”

Zim took a step toward him and Skoodge felt himself instinctively shifting his weight. Not a defensive stance yet, but ready to move. Zim couldn’t beat him in a straight fight, but fights with Zim were rarely straight. 

Zim was tiny and defective and easy not to take seriously, but sometimes Skoodge caught a glint in his eye and remembered that Zim was responsible for more Irken deaths than the resistance and the Meekrob Federation put together.

“You asked why I quit my job to devote my life to becoming an invader.”

“Yeah?” Skoodge took a step back as Zim took another step forward. He mentally counted the steps until he would be pressed up against the wall. 

He had five steps to de-escalate whatever this was.

“Because,” Zim said, slashing his hand through the air; a sharp, quick gesture, “this is Zim’s destiny. This is what Zim was made for. Conquest. _Glory_. The screams of his enemies. The _respect_ of those who would look down on him. And if not their respect,” the corner of Zim’s mouth spasmed, “then their screams too.”

“Oh,” said Skoodge. His logic processors skipped and stalled out like he’d just taken a blow to the PAK. He felt breathless, dizzy. Mental processes were kicked down to the physical level in preparation for—something. Maybe to fight for his life.

Zim was right in his face all of a sudden, quick as a quark popping in and out of existence. “So, if you _think_ you can swan in here with your _four_ planets and your _stupid _face and butt in on _my_ mission—“ he grabbed Skoodge by the collar, pulling him in close “—I will throw you in a lake. Do you understand? I will throw you in a lake and watch while your flesh body melts off your PAK, then I will fish it out and _smash_ it, Skoodge, do you understand me?”__

____

____

“Yeah,” Skoodge said. He felt hot under his skin. Full of energy that coiled tighter with every second Zim stared into his eyes. Every milligram of his calamitous attention directly on Skoodge. “I’m not here to steal your mission, Zim, I promise,” Skoodge whispered. “I just want to watch. I just want to see what you’ll do next.”

frowned. “Why?”

“I think you’re amazing.”

“Huh.” Zim’s grip on his uniform loosened. “Okay, that makes sense. I am pretty amazing—“

Skoodge leaned in to kiss Zim and didn’t have to tilt his head up even a little. As his lips met Zim’s, the entire universe seemed to click into place—then Zim bit him.

 _“Ow,_ dammit.” Skoodge jerked back, bringing his fingers up to his mouth. They came away pink. “Why did you do that?”

“How _dare_ you,” Zim snarled. He took a step back. The leg compartments on his PAK slid open and Skoodge went from dazed to scared for his life again real fast. “How—you— _inferior_ —” Zim spluttered “—Ask first! How _dare_ you touch Zim without permission!”

Ah. The universe still spun in its perfect, raging chaos, and Skoodge saw it all reflected in Zim’s eyes, as bright and red as two pieces of candy.

Zim would destroy everything one of these days, just as the universe would eventually die in ice and darkness. Skoodge knew that deep in his core programming. One of these days, Zim would finish what he’d started on the plains of Irk, and this time nothing would escape.

Skoodge’s logic programming lurched back to life and he was seconds away from pulling his gun and _saving_ everyone when the old, calcified hurt hiding behind Zim’s eyes stopped him. That wasn’t the expression of some huge, cosmic horror. That was the look of someone who hadn’t always been an infamous mass-murderer. There had been a time, long ago, when all Zim had been was a remarkably pretty, tragically short irken with a terrible personality.

“I’m sorry,” Skoodge said, and meant it. Possibly for the first time in his entire life.

Zim kept his gaze, and slowly, inch by inch, relaxed. His antennae perked back up from where they had been flat against his skull. His leg compartments slid shut. “Ask if you can kiss Zim,” he said.

Skoodge shifted on his feet, ready to dodge if Zim came after him. “Can I kiss you, Zim?”

“Hmm,” Zim tapped his chin. “I suppose.”

“Okay, I’m, um, going to do that, then.”

Zim’s mouth opened under his and Skoodge was so intent on dodging if Zim tried to bite him again that it took him a second to realize he was being kissed back.

Skoodge had already had his Irk-shattering epiphany for the day, so this time kissing Zim was just like kissing anyone else for the first time. Soft, a little unsure, increasingly wet and sloppy—oh, there were Zim’s teeth.

Zim walked Skoodge back five steps until his back was pressed up against the wall and Zim was pressed up against his front, and Skoodge wasn’t being actively murdered, but he thought he’d pretty handily _failed_ to deescalate the situation.

Zim’s tongue snaked past his teeth and Skoodge’s hands came up to clutch at Zim’s slim shoulders.

There were some situations that training just didn’t cover. Skoodge was just making the decision to go with the flow when Zim’s fingers hooked under the edge of his tunic and began rucking it up. Then Zim’s gloved fingers were on his bare skin.

Skoodge’s knees went weak. He slid down the wall in increments until he was sitting on the floor with his legs splayed out and Zim standing over him.

He tilted his chin up to meet Zim’s eyes. Zim looked good like this. Looking down.

Zim grinned at him, eyes narrow, and pulled his own tunic over his head.

Skoodge put his hand on the bare skin of Zim’s waist. He tightened his grip slowly until the blunt tips of his claws dented the flesh there and Zim exhaled, shakily, through his mouth.

Slowly, ready to stop if Zim’s antennae so much as twitched, Skoodge hooked his claws in the band of Zim’s leggings. Millimeter by millimeter, he pulled them down until he could see where Zim’s spike was just barely peeking out.

“Yeah?” He asked, glancing up at Zim.

Zim grabbed him painfully by the antenna and pulled him in until his face was pressed between Zim’s jutting hip bones, Zim’s spike curling lazily under his chin. _“Yes,”_ Zim said and let Skoodge go.

Skoodge braced his hands on Zim’s thighs and mouthed at edges of Zim’s opening, coaxing him all the way out, until he flexed, fully extended and dripping, against his cheek. Skoodge inhaled the scent of it; sweet and burnt and briny, like salted caramel.

Zim’s hands wrapped around the bases of Skoodge’s antenna, filling the world with the sound of flexing leather.

Skoodge stilled. Zim pressed against his lips and Skoodge let his mouth fall open. Zim’s spike writhed inside, curling around Skoodge’s tongue, and Skoodge let his eyes slip shut. He let go of Zim’s thighs, the only points of contact Zim’s spike in his mouth and Zim’s hands gripping his antennae.

He’d done this before, a few times, but never for anyone who tasted like danger and sugar and salt the way Zim did.

Zim’s spike pressed against the back of Skoodge’s throat and Skoodge choked, one hand flying down to press against where he was wet and writhing himself. Zim laughed as tears prickled at the edges of Skoodge’s eyes, and he sounded the same as he had fifty years ago when Irk had burned. Skoodge pressed the heel of his hand harder against himself and swallowed around Zim’s spike.

“I hope you’re grateful for the opportunity to serve Zim,” Zim said, stroking up one of Skoodge’s antennae. The crooked one.

Skoodge had been told to be grateful for a lot of things over his life. Things like being given a chance to die for people who hated, for being grudgingly awarded things that he’d _earned_ ten times over, for every scrap of respect or pleasure. Skoodge had never once been grateful, no matter how guilelessly he smiled and said thank you.

You shouldn’t have to be grateful for things you had earned.

Skoodge wasn’t grateful for this either, but he would kill for the chance to fall to his knees for Zim again.

Zim shuddered all over, his grip on Skoodge’s antennae tightening to the point of pain and just past—Skoodge’s auditory routines processing the pressure as a high whine like a fire alarm. He curled over Skoodge, bracing himself on Skoodge’s head, and Skoodge’s mouth filled with a thick slurry of unfertilized eggs. Skoodge choked on that too.

Zim staggered back as Skoodge was coughing. He sat down on the floor and listed over onto his side.

Skoodge shoved his hand down his leggings before he’d even caught his breath, and brought himself off quickly. It felt like an afterthought, even for him.

After, he crawled to where Zim lay on the rug and sat, an arm’s length away.

He let himself fall back, the rug soft on his bare skin. He lay there, feeling his systems gradually return to normal. There was a brush against his hand, then Zim’s fingers were snaking into his, tangling and squeezing. Skoodge squeezed back and stared at the ceiling.

“You’ll want credit for helping conquer the planet now, I suppose,” Zim said, sounding exasperated.

“No thanks,” Skoodge said. “I don’t need it.”

“Oh. Good.”

There was a beam of sunlight drifting across the ceiling, tinted green from the old curtains. They’d have to get up and start changing out the furniture soon.

Skoodge turned his head to look at Zim. Zim blinked at him, owlishly.

The defining characteristic of a defect—the thing that truly _made_ them defective—was that they did harm to the Empire. They couldn’t help it. Just by being alive, they threatened everything Irk stood for, everything it valued. That was why defects could not be allowed to exist.

“Hey, if I could get you a viral tank, what could you do with it?” Skoodge asked.

Zim sat straight upright, dragging Skoodge’s hand with him. “What could I _do?”_ he said. “Zim could crush this planet into dust.” He got to his feet, pulling Skoodge half up before letting go of his hand, letting Skoodge thunk back onto the carpet. He began to pace. “I could crack this ball of dirt open like a _smeet tube_. I could toss it into the sun. I could snuff _out_ the sun. I could—”

“Why stop at this solar system?” Skoodge said helpfully.

Zim paused, frowning at him. “It’s my mission.”

“Invaders are free to adjust their own mission parameters to best benefit the Empire.” Skoodge grinned, wondering how long he would survive now that he was caught firmly in Zim’s gravitational well. He hoped long enough to see Zim swallow the Empire whole. “Why conquer one planet when you could conquer _every_ planet?”

“Yes! Zim will _rule_ this galaxy. From the core to the outer edge, all will hear Zim’s name and _tremble.”_

“They sure will,” said Skoodge.


End file.
